Bruce Arians: Bucs would need “hellacious” offer to trade down

Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians inherits a team that was bad enough last year to earn the fifth overall pick in the draft. On Thursday night, they’ll use it. Unless they trade it.

“There would have to be some hellacious picks [offered],” Arians said Tuesday, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “There’s five guys on the board I love. You’d have to throw the bank and open the vault for [G.M.] Jason [Licht] to move down. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t. Just looking at the guys that are there. There’s really six guys that are once-in-a-generation-type players. I feel great about this draft.”

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If that’s the case, there’s no reason to trade down. But this is also a very deep draft, and Arians knows that in the crapshoot lottery that the draft will always be, it’s always better to have more scratch-off tickets. The question is how many more tickets would it take to get them to give up Ticket No. 5.

The Bucs are actually in a good spot to do a deal, given that the Giants pick at No. 6. If a player like quarterback Dwayne Haskins is still on the board and if other teams sense that this eleventh-hour push for quarterback Daniel Jones is nothing more than an effort to get people off the potential Giants-want-Haskins scent, a team that really wants Haskins could decide to leapfrog Dave Gettleman and company.